French

  • Manoel de Oliveira – La lettre AKA A Carta (1999)

    1991-2000ArthouseFranceManoel de OliveiraRomance

    Quote:
    A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.Read More »

  • S. Pierre Yameogo – Moi et mon blanc AKA Me and My White Man (2003)

    2001-2010African CinemaBurkina FasoComedyS. Pierre Yameogo

    Plot: Mamadi is struggling to complete a doctorate at a Parisian university after the government of his country has stopped paying his scholarship. Thanks to his acquaintances in the African community, he finds a job as night watchman in an underground car park. There, a French colleague, Franck, helps the friendly African academic getting around. However, the car park is also a meeting point for dubious characters, and when Mamadi accidentally wrecks a drug trafficking operation, Franck is really hard-pressed to put his pal and himself out of harm’s way. Wouldn’t Mamadi’s home country be the ideal place to escape the gangsters’ wrath?Read More »

  • Jean-Luc Godard – Scénario du film ‘Passion’ (1982)

    1981-1990DocumentaryFranceJean-Luc GodardVideo Art

    In scenario du film Passion, Godard constructs a lyrical study of the cinematic and creative process by deconstructing the story of His 1982 film Passion. “I did not want to write the script,” he states, “I wanted to see it.” Positioning himself in a video editing suite in front of a white film screen that evokes for him the “famous blank page of Mallarme” Godard uses video as a sketchbook with Which to reconceive the film. The result is a philosophical, often humorous rumination on the desire and labor that inform the conceptual and image making process of the cinema. directly quoting from and Further elaborating on the process and content of the earlier film – Which is itself about labor and creativity – Godard’s scenario is both rigorously theoretical and intensely personal.Read More »

  • Guy Lefranc – Une Histoire d’Amour AKA Young Love (1951)

    Drama1951-1960FranceGuy Lefranc

    Caherine, 18, loved Jean, a young accountant, who loved her in return. And yet, one morning, two policemen find their dead bodies on a stretch of waste ground. The case is obvious: the two young people have killed themselves. But why? Chief Inspector Ernest Plonche, feeling upset, decides to investigate personally…Read More »

  • Georges Lautner – La cage aux folles 3 – ‘Elles’ se marient AKA La Cage aux Folles 3: The Wedding (1986)

    France1981-1990ComedyGeorges LautnerQueer Cinema(s)

    SYNOPSIS :
    Albin and Renato, the owners of St-Tropez’s most notorious night club, are facing financial ruin. Albin Mougeotte (Michel Serreault) learns that he is to inherit a big sum of money but to have the right to it, the testament demands him to get married and have a child within the next 18 months. Being gay (drag), he gets perplex and doesn’t know what to do. He hides such details to his boyfriend Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) but he’ll finally find out about it and will try to find a way to the situation. Albin will try to date women, dress ‘normal’ almost throughout the film as he needs to hide his homosexuality (but the manners remains of course). Will Albin be capable to fool himself into a marriage and child and get the money or will he choose to stay himself and refuse it?Read More »

  • Jean-Pierre Mocky – À mort l’arbitre! AKA Kill the Referee (1984)

    1981-1990FranceJean-Pierre MockyThriller

    Michel, a referee has to suffer the consequences of having whistled a penalty against a team which is supported by football hooligans.Read More »

  • Bertrand Tavernier – Un dimanche à la campagne AKA A Sunday in the Country (1984)

    Drama1981-1990Bertrand TavernierFrance

    Synopsis:
    “Monsieur Ladmiral is an ageing painter who lives alone in his country house, cared for by his housekeeper, Mercedes. Every so often, his son Gonzague comes to visit him with his young family. One late summer Sunday in 1912, the customary visit is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Ladmiral’s unpredictable daughter, Irene…”
    – Films de FranceRead More »

  • Marion Hänsel – Si le vent soulève les sables AKA Sounds of Sand (2006)

    2001-2010African CinemaArthouseDramaFranceMarion Hänsel

    On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality. Rahne and his family travel across hostile lands under a lethal sun, walking endlessly onwards and frequently crossing paths with death. But “Sounds of sand” is also a parable about determination and eternity that takes us in the footsteps of Shasha, a nomad child full of the joys of life, whose tenacity and strength will conquer her father’s love.Read More »

  • Pierre Billon – L’homme au chapeau rond AKA The Eternal Husband (1946)

    1941-1950DramaFrancePierre Billon

    An adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Le Eternel Mari”, a somber story of marital infidelity, revenge and near madness, and starring Raimu in his last film appearance.Read More »

Back to top button